Algonquin pipeline protesters guilty of trespassing, but judge spares them punishment

• The protesters' attorney said he will appeal the guilty verdict
• Prosecutors wanted the three to serve 300 hours of community service with a group not affiliated with environmental causes
• The protesters said they were trying to prevent a greater harm
• "This case has dragged on long enough," - Judge Kimberly Ragazzo

A Cortlandt judge on Tuesday found three protesters guilty of trespassing for locking themselves inside a natural gas pipeline in Verplanck in 2016 but let them go free without any punishment.

Judge Kimberley Ragazzo rejected a prosecutor’s request that the protesters perform 300 hours of community service with an organization not affiliated with environmental causes.

Instead, Ragazzo said the three were free to continue protesting as long as they don’t break the law.

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“This case has dragged on long enough,” Ragazzo said.

Rebecca J. Berlin of Yorktown Heights, Janet Gonzalez of Yonkers and David Publow of Troy spent 16 hours inside a section of pipeline on Oct. 10, 2016, protesting the federal government's decision to allow the pipeline be installed near Indian Point nuclear power plant.

The three were arrested shortly before midnight by state troopers who spent the day negotiating with them to exit a section of pipe 42 inches in diameter that was being readied to carry gas under the Hudson River. While there, they sent short videos out on Twitter.

Their attorney, David Dorfman, said he will appeal the guilty verdict.

Dorfman used the so-called necessity defense, arguing the three were trying to prevent a greater harm by demonstrating opposition to expansion of the Algonquin Incremental Market Pipeline, which cuts through several lower Hudson Valley towns while carrying fracked natural gas from Pennsylvania to New England.

The defense applies to individuals who burn down property to prevent a forest fire from spreading or those who break into an occupied building to place a call that saves someone’s life, Ragazzo noted.

The judge drew a distinction between those scenarios and the one confronted by the defendants, noting they had failed to exhaust every avenue of protest available before choosing to lock themselves inside the pipeline.

They could have written letters or tried to intervene in the regulatory process, Ragazzo said.

“There was a process the defendants could have entered into,” Ragazzo said. “By their own admission, that was not done.”

Act of protest

After the verdict, some two dozen supporters turned their backs on the judge and walked out of the courtroom voicing the words to the  ballad “People Gonna Rise,” written for the pipeline resistance movement.

Several in attendance have in recent years participated in vigils and protests staged across the Hudson Valley, including several held outside Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s New Castle home.

 “I wish we had a better result,” Dorfman told supporters gathered outside the Cortlandt courthouse. “We had the right mix but I think the wrong defendants.”

While others in the resistance movement wrote letters of opposition and pursued regulatory challenges, not all the defendants had, said Dorfman, who teaches at Pace Law School in White Plains.

“The legal process is always seeking to go for a narrow route,” Publow, a farmer, said in a statement. “That process is not going to cut a new path for us, but I think we’re cutting a new path for ourselves.”

Courtney Williams, a leader of the Stop the Algonquin Pipeline movement who lives in Peekskill, criticized Ragazzo’s decision.  

“That the judge ruled against these water protectors because they had not filed as intervenors is ridiculous,” Williams said.

Williams said her group, along with the environmental group Riverkeeper and the Town of Cortlandt, had formally challenged expansion of the pipeline in the Hudson Valley and beyond.

“Being an intervenor wouldn't have given Dave, Rebecca, or Janet any more ability to stop the pipeline,” Williams said. “They had to act.”

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